Showing posts with label wisdom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wisdom. Show all posts
Monday 22 January 2024
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Sunday 20 December 2020
Sunday 6 March 2016
How can we know ourself?
Questioner: How can
we know ourselves?
Jiddu
Krishnamurti: You know your face because you have often looked at it reflected
in the mirror. Now, there is a mirror in which you
can see yourself entirely - not your face, but all that you think, all that you
feel, your motives, your appetites, your urges and fears. That mirror is the
mirror of relationship: the relationship between you and your parents, between
you and your teachers, between you and the river, the trees, the earth, between
you and your thoughts. Relationship is a mirror in which you can see yourself,
not as you would wish to be, but as you are. I may wish, when looking in an
ordinary mirror, that it would show me to be beautiful, but that does not
happen because the mirror reflects my face exactly as it is and I cannot
deceive myself. Similarly, I can see myself exactly as I am in the mirror of my
relationship with others. I can observe how I talk to people: most politely to
those who I think can give me something, and rudely or contemptuously to those
who cannot. I am attentive to those I am afraid of. I get up when important
people come in, but when the servant enters I pay no attention. So, by
observing myself in relationship, I have found out how falsely I respect
people, have I not? And I can also discover myself as I am in my relationship
with the trees and the birds, with ideas and books.
You may have all the
academic degrees in the world, but if you don't know yourself you are a most
stupid person. To know oneself is the very purpose of all education. Without
self-knowledge,merely to gather facts or take notes so that you can pass
examinations is a stupid way of existence. You may be able to quote the Bhagavad
Gita, the Upanishads, the Koran and the Bible, but unless you know yourself you
are like a parrot repeating words. Whereas, the moment you begin to know
yourself, however little, there is already set going an extraordinary process
of creativeness. It is a discovery to suddenly see yourself as you actually
are: greedy, quarrelsome, angry, envious, stupid. To see the fact without
trying to alter it, just to see exactly what you are is an astonishing
revelation. From there you can go deeper and deeper, infinitely, because there
is no end to self-knowledge.
Through
self-knowledge you begin to find out what is God, what is truth, what is that
state which is timeless. Your teacher may pass on to you the knowledge which he
received from his teacher, and you may do well in your examinations, get a
degree and all the rest of it; but, without knowing yourself as you know your
own face in the mirror, all other knowledge has very little meaning. Learned
people who don't know themselves are really unintelligent; they don't know what
thinking is, what life is. That is why it is important for the educator to be
educated in the true sense of the word, which means that he must know the
workings of his own mind and heart, see himself exactly as he is in the mirror
of relationship. Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom. in self-knowledge
is the whole universe; it embraces all the struggles of humanity.Thursday 17 September 2015
Databall
Big data is already reshaping on-field tactics and team selection. It may not be too long before it changes the game as we know it
Fast-bowler slayer: Rajasthan Royals' use of Brad Hodge down the order defied conventional wisdom, but it paid off © AFP
More famously Ajit Wadekar and Mohammad Azharuddin used Sachin Tendulkar to open the innings in ODIs in 1994, a move that lasted 18 years, multiple captaincies and brought India 15,310 runs and two World Cup finals. Arguably, it also paved the way for two other middle-order batsmen, Sourav Ganguly and Virender Sehwag, to open in ODIs.
Note the difference between Bharucha's explanation for the Hodge tactic and the other examples. Buchanan's explanation was based on an understanding that a specialist batsman's methods are useful against faster bowlers. Gavaskar's educated guess was down to his reading of Kapil's approach. Bradman surmised that the surer methods of specialist batsmen would yield greater results on a drier pitch. The "data", such as it was, that Wadekar and Azharuddin had to go on, had to do with Tendulkar's ability to attack the bowling, and Tendulkar's enthusiasm for the job. Bharucha had nothing to say about Hodge's technique or approach. His reasoning was based entirely on a new kind of measurement - the measurement of outcomes, based on events that had been recorded.
It would be a mistake to think that tactical choices were not based on data before the IPL or before Buchanan became Australia's coach. Data was used. It was data about technique and approach, not outcomes. It may not have been tabulated into percentages or frequency distributions or probabilities, but technique has always been based on propensities. The history of the game is littered with stories of eagle-eyed slip fielders who could see a batsman and work out his weaknesses - which good bowlers could then exploit. The use of logical inference based on observed fact to improve performance and make tactical choices is as old as the game itself. What is new is the type of data being collected.
"Moneyball", the data revolution in baseball, is about getting better value for money. As Jonah Hill's character in the movie about Oakland Athletics explains, teams have to think in terms of buying runs and outs, not players. The argument in Moneyball is an argument between two types of data: data from scouts, who observe players and reach judgements about their potential, and data about outcomes - runs, outs, walks, strikeouts and the like.
In baseball, the basic use of data about outcomes is to identify inefficiencies in the way players are valued. The returns on this approach should logically diminish with time; an inefficiency is only an inefficiency until other teams also see it as one. For example, if Mumbai Indians decided to use their deeper pockets to ensure the most favourable match-ups for as many of the 20 overs as possible, Royals would no longer have a competitive advantage. If Mumbai Indians looked at the same data as Royals, and made sure that a spinner was held back until Hodge came in to bat, they would be able to somewhat negate Hodge's effectiveness. Before long the quest to eliminate inefficiencies will merely keep teams from falling behind, instead of giving them a competitive advantage.
LA Dodgers manager Don Mattingly runs the show from the dugout, involving himself before nearly every pitch © Getty Images
This could play a big role in the kind of players that teams will select. Royals provide a glimpse into the future. Their decision to open the batting with Dravid (and later with Ajinkya Rahane) was the result of a combination of insights. The data showed that being 45 for 1 after six overs was better than being 60 for 3 at the same stage, and so Royals, according to Bharucha, "wanted someone who could hit good cricketing shots along the ground and pierce the gaps". Between 2011 and 2013, Dravid was an above-average IPL opener, scoring quickly and surely. After the Powerplay his scoring rate often dropped and his efforts to score at pace led to his dismissal far too regularly. Both Dravid and Bharucha told me that the idea of Dravid throwing caution to the wind after the sixth over, instead of trying to anchor the innings, was considered. The data suggested that it was more advantageous for Dravid to get out trying to score quickly than to develop his innings in the conventional sense after the Powerplay. In other words, it was better for Dravid to be replaced by a player who is, say, exceptionally good at hitting legspin, but not so good at other aspects of batting, or eventually by Hodge, the late-overs specialist hitter of pace.
It is possible to imagine a future where players develop their game in such hyper-specialised directions. The IPL already rewards players who are exceptionally skilled at hitting medium pace over the infield - though their game has not developed in other directions. Teams may soon try to ensure that these hyper-specialists are not used in situations that require other talents. Platooning - the idea of using specific players against specific opponents - is a time-honoured practice in baseball. Many baseballers focus on enhancing specific skills for specific situations - like left-hand relief pitchers going up against left-hand batters late in the innings.
Compared to Bharucha, Buchanan met with less success in implementing his ideas at Kolkata Knight Riders. His attempt to rope in a fielding coach with a baseball background (John Deeble) wasn't as successful as his path-breaking use of Mike Young with the Australian side. During his two-year stint as director of cricket in New Zealand, Buchanan says, a couple of economists used a huge data set to produce an "in-game analysis which gave information to the coach and team what tactics should be employed on the next delivery or next few deliveries to control the game, and thereby influence the probability of winning". The idea never took off and was resisted by coaches and players.
Buchanan makes the point about how a data-based approach to on-field strategy requires players to be accountable for each of their decisions. If the coaches don't know exactly what a bowler is trying to do with a given delivery, it is impossible for them to know whether the bowler's plan was successful (irrespective of the outcome). "If we [the team and coaching staff] know what the set play looks like, then we are all tuned to how well that is executed." Buchanan says players are resistant to this kind of accountability, and perhaps also to giving up autonomy.
The central question teams need to tackle is whether or not a coach has a legitimate role as a tactician when a game is in progress. The architecture of cricket grounds sets up many constraints. During T20 games players sit in dugouts - an innovation borrowed from American sport and football. However, in baseball and football, the dugout serves a specific purpose: the coach or manager runs the game from there. Not only does Don Mattingly, the coach of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, instruct his players before nearly every pitch, he also has an elaborate system of signs that is constantly updated so that it remains secret.
Peter Moores was criticised for being data-driven but so are many teams and coaches © Getty Images
In cricket, the relationship between those off the field and the active players has traditionally been distant. When Bob Woolmer tried to get Hansie Cronje to wear a earpiece he was not merely ahead of his time, he was trying to subvert the architecture of the sport. Cricket has traditionally had a different approach to accountability compared to baseball or football. This is no surprise. Baseball and football have been played for profit for far longer than cricket has, and consequently are mature big-money sports. It is unlikely that baseballers and footballers - often young men with little professional experience - are going to be left to their own devices when so much money is at stake. Every play has to be managed and every effort has to be made to get the most out of every play, or at least, teams need to be seen to be getting the most out of every play. Cricket may eventually get there but it will need both a change in attitudes, and there will need to be a means for coaches to get involved in each on-field decision.
The effectiveness of the use of cricket data is limited by how often new information can be conveyed to players and also by how often players can be substituted during a game. In baseball only nine players are in the game at any time, but each team's bench holds a further 16, of whom about 12 are usually available for use.
The use of match data in cricket is still in its infancy. Here is an example of software used by Cricket Australia (CA). It is developed by a company called Fair Play, and many cricket teams (franchise and international) use this system.
© Fair Play
Currently data is entered manually, in real time. The time available to make a record of each delivery is limited to the time it takes for the bowler to deliver the next one. As CA's Team Performance Information Manager Brian McFadyen observed in an email, it is much harder to capture data when spinners are bowling than when fast bowlers are bowling. A total of 166,006 balls were delivered in men's international cricket alone in 2014. Collecting data for 60 or 70 variables for each delivery would take about 5500 hours, assuming that it takes, on average, two seconds to record each variable. As you can imagine, this is an expensive and labour-intensive proposition.
Cricket might go the way of Major League Baseball's Statcast, a tracking technology used by many baseball franchises and now also available on broadcast. According to the MLB website, Statcast "collects the data using a series of high-resolution optical cameras along with radar equipment that has been installed in all 30 Major League ballparks. The technology precisely tracks the location and movements of the ball and every player on the field at any given time."
The data is mined using algorithms on the raw video data, and hence a large amount of data is captured for every single pitch. It is not only used by franchises for analysis but also in broadcasts to help fans develop a better understanding.
The use of data promises to change not only how cricket is played but also how it is watched and analysed. It is possible to foresee new types of television shows presenting data-based insights, and new types of fan engagements, like fantasy leagues, enhanced by the use of data. Perhaps conventional wisdom about risk-taking and probabilities of success will be refined. Today's television broadcast is littered with statistics like WASP, the Batting Index, the Bowling Index and the Pressure Index. What is missing is a critical mass of experts who are competent enough to discuss the merits of these measures and educate fans on how they work.
The first decade of franchise-based cricket saw the language and grammar of long-form cricket being adopted wholesale to describe the new game. Spinners, we were told in the early days, were deceiving batsmen the same way they did in Tests. This despite the fact that batsmen were often of a different mindset facing spin in T20s than in the middle of a Test. It is now clear that the 20-over game has little in common with the longer versions, and perhaps the use of data to maximise each player's productivity will provide the impetus for a new language.
The larger question is how this will affect the way the game is played. Buchanan's dream of using data and technology to systematically develop ambidextrous players - polymath super-cricketers - may well have to give way to developing thousands of players who loft the ball better than Tendulkar ever could, but can't play the short ball at all. Instead of super-cricketers, big data might produce mini-cricketers run by super-managers.
We have already seen how things can go pear-shaped for super-managers. Peter Moores had two stints as England's head coach. Kevin Pietersen, the England captain during Moores' first stint, would later ridicule him for constantly emphasising metrics. In his autobiography Pietersen suggested that the central effect of all the data input was to irritate the players. Moores' second stint ended farcically when an innocent comment, after England were eliminated from the 2015 World Cup, was used as proof of his unhealthy obsession with data. The subtext was obvious: sport is played with heart and brawn, so who does this guy think he is to assume numbers are important? For fans humiliated by a big defeat, this type of chauvinism is too delicious to resist. Data - facts - would just complicate their catharsis.
At the same time, data is central to every team's preparation for matches. In an interview to the Cricket Monthly, Ricky Ponting observed that matters have reached a point now where every player has a laptop, and every player has to study before games. Whatever Moores' critics might say, every team pores over vast amounts of data and studies their opponents.
What remains to be seen is the effect of big data on cricket's evolution. Will the overall quality of the game improve? Will the coach emerge as match-manager and chief tactician? Will tomorrow's average cricketer be fitter, stronger, more skilful, more versatile than today's? Or, despite the best intentions of coaches, captains and players, will the data ensure that new types of tail-enders proliferate?
Time will tell.
KARTIKEYA DATE in Cricinfo | SEPTEMBER 2015
In 2012, Rajasthan Royals signed Brad Hodge, one of a generation of high-quality Australian cricketers who spent years on the fringes of an all-time great side. Given Hodge's pioneering T20 efforts, above and beyond his first-class and Test experience, this was a major signing by IPL standards.
Conventional wisdom held that Hodge should bat early in the innings. But Royals used Hodge deep in the order, preferring lesser local players at Nos. 3, 4 and 5. Observers were perplexed. ESPNcricinfo's S Rajesh wrote that their decision defied logic because Hodge had better overall numbers than those who batted ahead of him.
Zubin Bharucha, Royals' director of cricket, explained the rationale behind Hodge batting at No. 6 or even 7 in an email interview. He said Royals had "nobody better to play the role against the fast bowlers, and with those last four-five overs deciding the course of a majority of games, wouldn't you want the player having the best stats against fast bowling to take on the responsibility for that phase?"
According to Bharucha, they found that Hodge had done brilliantly against pace (a strike rate of 157) but relatively poorly against spin (strike rate 115). Why use him at No. 3 when he would almost certainly have to face the full spells of the opposition's specialist spinners? Even if a spinner was bowling late in the innings, Rahul Dravid, then Royals' captain, told me in a Skype interview, the instructions to Hodge were to avoid taking chances, play the over out if need be, and save himself to attack the faster bowlers. Hodge's batting position was incidental. The point was to use him against fast bowling at the end of the innings. Data showed that this would be a better use of Hodge than the more conventional approach.
In 2012, Rajasthan Royals signed Brad Hodge, one of a generation of high-quality Australian cricketers who spent years on the fringes of an all-time great side. Given Hodge's pioneering T20 efforts, above and beyond his first-class and Test experience, this was a major signing by IPL standards.
Conventional wisdom held that Hodge should bat early in the innings. But Royals used Hodge deep in the order, preferring lesser local players at Nos. 3, 4 and 5. Observers were perplexed. ESPNcricinfo's S Rajesh wrote that their decision defied logic because Hodge had better overall numbers than those who batted ahead of him.
Zubin Bharucha, Royals' director of cricket, explained the rationale behind Hodge batting at No. 6 or even 7 in an email interview. He said Royals had "nobody better to play the role against the fast bowlers, and with those last four-five overs deciding the course of a majority of games, wouldn't you want the player having the best stats against fast bowling to take on the responsibility for that phase?"
According to Bharucha, they found that Hodge had done brilliantly against pace (a strike rate of 157) but relatively poorly against spin (strike rate 115). Why use him at No. 3 when he would almost certainly have to face the full spells of the opposition's specialist spinners? Even if a spinner was bowling late in the innings, Rahul Dravid, then Royals' captain, told me in a Skype interview, the instructions to Hodge were to avoid taking chances, play the over out if need be, and save himself to attack the faster bowlers. Hodge's batting position was incidental. The point was to use him against fast bowling at the end of the innings. Data showed that this would be a better use of Hodge than the more conventional approach.
A journeyman Ranji Trophy batsman could work on one aspect of his attacking play to the exclusion of all others and become useful for his franchise as a hyper-specialist
This strategy seemed to work during Hodge's second season with Royals. He remained unbeaten seven times in 14 innings and scored 293 runs in 218 balls. Interestingly Hodge played for two other T20 sides between 2012 and 2014 - Melbourne Stars and Barisal Burners. Both used him in one of the top three spots and he did just as well in terms of strike rate and batting average. However, the success of Royals' experiment lay not just in Hodge's numbers but in the success of other players and of the team as a whole.
Royals was not the first side to make such a tactical choice. Don Bradman famously reversed his batting order on a drying pitchin Melbourne in the 1936-37 Ashes. Sunil Gavaskar has written in One Day Wonders about holding back Kapil Dev while Lance Cairns was bowling in the semi-final of the 1985 World Championship of Cricket. Gavaskar felt Kapil was better off taking on the pace of Richard Hadlee rather than the deceptively tempting mediums of Cairns. Kapil made 54 in 37 balls and saw India home.
There have also been more systematic tactical choices. During the 1995-96 Australian domestic season, John Buchanan, then the Queensland coach, used Jimmy Maher and Martin Love to take on fast bowlers in the last ten overs. As Buchanan explained in an email interview, "I wanted skilled batsmen who could also run well between wickets to take advantage of this period. It did mean we might sacrifice some scoring possibilities earlier, but I backed our top order as well as the fact that we chose some batting allrounders who could bat higher."
This strategy seemed to work during Hodge's second season with Royals. He remained unbeaten seven times in 14 innings and scored 293 runs in 218 balls. Interestingly Hodge played for two other T20 sides between 2012 and 2014 - Melbourne Stars and Barisal Burners. Both used him in one of the top three spots and he did just as well in terms of strike rate and batting average. However, the success of Royals' experiment lay not just in Hodge's numbers but in the success of other players and of the team as a whole.
Royals was not the first side to make such a tactical choice. Don Bradman famously reversed his batting order on a drying pitchin Melbourne in the 1936-37 Ashes. Sunil Gavaskar has written in One Day Wonders about holding back Kapil Dev while Lance Cairns was bowling in the semi-final of the 1985 World Championship of Cricket. Gavaskar felt Kapil was better off taking on the pace of Richard Hadlee rather than the deceptively tempting mediums of Cairns. Kapil made 54 in 37 balls and saw India home.
There have also been more systematic tactical choices. During the 1995-96 Australian domestic season, John Buchanan, then the Queensland coach, used Jimmy Maher and Martin Love to take on fast bowlers in the last ten overs. As Buchanan explained in an email interview, "I wanted skilled batsmen who could also run well between wickets to take advantage of this period. It did mean we might sacrifice some scoring possibilities earlier, but I backed our top order as well as the fact that we chose some batting allrounders who could bat higher."
Fast-bowler slayer: Rajasthan Royals' use of Brad Hodge down the order defied conventional wisdom, but it paid off © AFP
More famously Ajit Wadekar and Mohammad Azharuddin used Sachin Tendulkar to open the innings in ODIs in 1994, a move that lasted 18 years, multiple captaincies and brought India 15,310 runs and two World Cup finals. Arguably, it also paved the way for two other middle-order batsmen, Sourav Ganguly and Virender Sehwag, to open in ODIs.
Note the difference between Bharucha's explanation for the Hodge tactic and the other examples. Buchanan's explanation was based on an understanding that a specialist batsman's methods are useful against faster bowlers. Gavaskar's educated guess was down to his reading of Kapil's approach. Bradman surmised that the surer methods of specialist batsmen would yield greater results on a drier pitch. The "data", such as it was, that Wadekar and Azharuddin had to go on, had to do with Tendulkar's ability to attack the bowling, and Tendulkar's enthusiasm for the job. Bharucha had nothing to say about Hodge's technique or approach. His reasoning was based entirely on a new kind of measurement - the measurement of outcomes, based on events that had been recorded.
The central question teams need to tackle is whether or not a coach has a legitimate role as a tactician when a game is in progress
It would be a mistake to think that tactical choices were not based on data before the IPL or before Buchanan became Australia's coach. Data was used. It was data about technique and approach, not outcomes. It may not have been tabulated into percentages or frequency distributions or probabilities, but technique has always been based on propensities. The history of the game is littered with stories of eagle-eyed slip fielders who could see a batsman and work out his weaknesses - which good bowlers could then exploit. The use of logical inference based on observed fact to improve performance and make tactical choices is as old as the game itself. What is new is the type of data being collected.
"Moneyball", the data revolution in baseball, is about getting better value for money. As Jonah Hill's character in the movie about Oakland Athletics explains, teams have to think in terms of buying runs and outs, not players. The argument in Moneyball is an argument between two types of data: data from scouts, who observe players and reach judgements about their potential, and data about outcomes - runs, outs, walks, strikeouts and the like.
In baseball, the basic use of data about outcomes is to identify inefficiencies in the way players are valued. The returns on this approach should logically diminish with time; an inefficiency is only an inefficiency until other teams also see it as one. For example, if Mumbai Indians decided to use their deeper pockets to ensure the most favourable match-ups for as many of the 20 overs as possible, Royals would no longer have a competitive advantage. If Mumbai Indians looked at the same data as Royals, and made sure that a spinner was held back until Hodge came in to bat, they would be able to somewhat negate Hodge's effectiveness. Before long the quest to eliminate inefficiencies will merely keep teams from falling behind, instead of giving them a competitive advantage.
LA Dodgers manager Don Mattingly runs the show from the dugout, involving himself before nearly every pitch © Getty Images
This could play a big role in the kind of players that teams will select. Royals provide a glimpse into the future. Their decision to open the batting with Dravid (and later with Ajinkya Rahane) was the result of a combination of insights. The data showed that being 45 for 1 after six overs was better than being 60 for 3 at the same stage, and so Royals, according to Bharucha, "wanted someone who could hit good cricketing shots along the ground and pierce the gaps". Between 2011 and 2013, Dravid was an above-average IPL opener, scoring quickly and surely. After the Powerplay his scoring rate often dropped and his efforts to score at pace led to his dismissal far too regularly. Both Dravid and Bharucha told me that the idea of Dravid throwing caution to the wind after the sixth over, instead of trying to anchor the innings, was considered. The data suggested that it was more advantageous for Dravid to get out trying to score quickly than to develop his innings in the conventional sense after the Powerplay. In other words, it was better for Dravid to be replaced by a player who is, say, exceptionally good at hitting legspin, but not so good at other aspects of batting, or eventually by Hodge, the late-overs specialist hitter of pace.
It is possible to imagine a future where players develop their game in such hyper-specialised directions. The IPL already rewards players who are exceptionally skilled at hitting medium pace over the infield - though their game has not developed in other directions. Teams may soon try to ensure that these hyper-specialists are not used in situations that require other talents. Platooning - the idea of using specific players against specific opponents - is a time-honoured practice in baseball. Many baseballers focus on enhancing specific skills for specific situations - like left-hand relief pitchers going up against left-hand batters late in the innings.
When Bob Woolmer tried to get Hansie Cronje to wear an earpiece he was not merely ahead of his time, he was trying to subvert the architecture of the sport
This trend could create new opportunities in cricket. A journeyman Ranji Trophy middle-order batsman, who will never challenge Rahane for a slot in India's Test team, could work on one aspect of his attacking play to the exclusion of all others and become useful for his franchise as a hyper-specialist. The logical conclusion of Hodge's story would be for Royals to leave him out of the XI against a team playing no fast bowlers, even if he was in fantastic form. Instead they might select a local batsman who is extremely skilled at hitting spinners. The data might eventually show that a $35,000 local player is better than a $350,000 international in a big final.
Developing such hyper-specialists runs counter to generations of coaching wisdom. This tension came through in my interview with Bharucha, who was keenly aware of the different emphases involved in training a Test player and training an IPL specialist. Royals say that their ambition is to produce cricketers for India. But they need to balance the necessity of training specialists - to make the most of their limited resources - against producing well-rounded Test cricketers. Bharucha, a former first-class batsman who learnt his cricket under old-school coaches in Mumbai, points to the development and ambitions of Rahane, Sanju Samson, Stuart Binny and Karun Nair (who hit a triple-hundred in the 2015 Ranji final) as all-format players. "The way we teach and instruct," Bharucha wrote, "will always be to tighten technique and play quality cricket shots, even though it is T20 we are talking about. I feel coaching has always got to be something far deeper and must include the overarching goal of improving the quality of cricket played around the world."
The cerebral coach: John Buchanan's method revolved around making players accountable for their decisions on the field © AFP
Bharucha is aware of the contradiction. On the one hand Royals take a radical approach to batting. As he explained with regard to Hodge, "There are no batting numbers at Royals, only an over in which a batsman could potentially go in."
On the other hand, Bharucha also said, "At Royals one always weighs all of this up against the promotion of Indian talent, as year on year we look to shape the life and career of someone who could be a valuable contributor to the country. It's never just a shallow decision of who should bat where."
Winning in the IPL may well require cold-blooded platooning and the pursuit of hyper-specialists. But it would be a mistake to ignore the way longer currents of history shape the work of coaches and tacticians, whatever the data might say.
Acombination of technology and vast sums of money on offer has played a big part in creating the basis for a data-centred approach to tactics and specialisation. Some, like Bharucha and Buchanan, see data in match play and coaching as a boon. Buchanan visualises the role of the cricket coach evolving into one of a tactician and match-manager. But like all change, progress has been interrupted by older conventions and attitudes.
This trend could create new opportunities in cricket. A journeyman Ranji Trophy middle-order batsman, who will never challenge Rahane for a slot in India's Test team, could work on one aspect of his attacking play to the exclusion of all others and become useful for his franchise as a hyper-specialist. The logical conclusion of Hodge's story would be for Royals to leave him out of the XI against a team playing no fast bowlers, even if he was in fantastic form. Instead they might select a local batsman who is extremely skilled at hitting spinners. The data might eventually show that a $35,000 local player is better than a $350,000 international in a big final.
Developing such hyper-specialists runs counter to generations of coaching wisdom. This tension came through in my interview with Bharucha, who was keenly aware of the different emphases involved in training a Test player and training an IPL specialist. Royals say that their ambition is to produce cricketers for India. But they need to balance the necessity of training specialists - to make the most of their limited resources - against producing well-rounded Test cricketers. Bharucha, a former first-class batsman who learnt his cricket under old-school coaches in Mumbai, points to the development and ambitions of Rahane, Sanju Samson, Stuart Binny and Karun Nair (who hit a triple-hundred in the 2015 Ranji final) as all-format players. "The way we teach and instruct," Bharucha wrote, "will always be to tighten technique and play quality cricket shots, even though it is T20 we are talking about. I feel coaching has always got to be something far deeper and must include the overarching goal of improving the quality of cricket played around the world."
The cerebral coach: John Buchanan's method revolved around making players accountable for their decisions on the field © AFP
Bharucha is aware of the contradiction. On the one hand Royals take a radical approach to batting. As he explained with regard to Hodge, "There are no batting numbers at Royals, only an over in which a batsman could potentially go in."
On the other hand, Bharucha also said, "At Royals one always weighs all of this up against the promotion of Indian talent, as year on year we look to shape the life and career of someone who could be a valuable contributor to the country. It's never just a shallow decision of who should bat where."
Winning in the IPL may well require cold-blooded platooning and the pursuit of hyper-specialists. But it would be a mistake to ignore the way longer currents of history shape the work of coaches and tacticians, whatever the data might say.
Acombination of technology and vast sums of money on offer has played a big part in creating the basis for a data-centred approach to tactics and specialisation. Some, like Bharucha and Buchanan, see data in match play and coaching as a boon. Buchanan visualises the role of the cricket coach evolving into one of a tactician and match-manager. But like all change, progress has been interrupted by older conventions and attitudes.
The use of logical inference based on observed fact to improve performance and make tactical choices is as old as the game itself. What is new is the type of data being collected
Compared to Bharucha, Buchanan met with less success in implementing his ideas at Kolkata Knight Riders. His attempt to rope in a fielding coach with a baseball background (John Deeble) wasn't as successful as his path-breaking use of Mike Young with the Australian side. During his two-year stint as director of cricket in New Zealand, Buchanan says, a couple of economists used a huge data set to produce an "in-game analysis which gave information to the coach and team what tactics should be employed on the next delivery or next few deliveries to control the game, and thereby influence the probability of winning". The idea never took off and was resisted by coaches and players.
Buchanan makes the point about how a data-based approach to on-field strategy requires players to be accountable for each of their decisions. If the coaches don't know exactly what a bowler is trying to do with a given delivery, it is impossible for them to know whether the bowler's plan was successful (irrespective of the outcome). "If we [the team and coaching staff] know what the set play looks like, then we are all tuned to how well that is executed." Buchanan says players are resistant to this kind of accountability, and perhaps also to giving up autonomy.
The central question teams need to tackle is whether or not a coach has a legitimate role as a tactician when a game is in progress. The architecture of cricket grounds sets up many constraints. During T20 games players sit in dugouts - an innovation borrowed from American sport and football. However, in baseball and football, the dugout serves a specific purpose: the coach or manager runs the game from there. Not only does Don Mattingly, the coach of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, instruct his players before nearly every pitch, he also has an elaborate system of signs that is constantly updated so that it remains secret.
Peter Moores was criticised for being data-driven but so are many teams and coaches © Getty Images
In cricket, the relationship between those off the field and the active players has traditionally been distant. When Bob Woolmer tried to get Hansie Cronje to wear a earpiece he was not merely ahead of his time, he was trying to subvert the architecture of the sport. Cricket has traditionally had a different approach to accountability compared to baseball or football. This is no surprise. Baseball and football have been played for profit for far longer than cricket has, and consequently are mature big-money sports. It is unlikely that baseballers and footballers - often young men with little professional experience - are going to be left to their own devices when so much money is at stake. Every play has to be managed and every effort has to be made to get the most out of every play, or at least, teams need to be seen to be getting the most out of every play. Cricket may eventually get there but it will need both a change in attitudes, and there will need to be a means for coaches to get involved in each on-field decision.
The effectiveness of the use of cricket data is limited by how often new information can be conveyed to players and also by how often players can be substituted during a game. In baseball only nine players are in the game at any time, but each team's bench holds a further 16, of whom about 12 are usually available for use.
The use of match data in cricket is still in its infancy. Here is an example of software used by Cricket Australia (CA). It is developed by a company called Fair Play, and many cricket teams (franchise and international) use this system.
© Fair Play
Currently data is entered manually, in real time. The time available to make a record of each delivery is limited to the time it takes for the bowler to deliver the next one. As CA's Team Performance Information Manager Brian McFadyen observed in an email, it is much harder to capture data when spinners are bowling than when fast bowlers are bowling. A total of 166,006 balls were delivered in men's international cricket alone in 2014. Collecting data for 60 or 70 variables for each delivery would take about 5500 hours, assuming that it takes, on average, two seconds to record each variable. As you can imagine, this is an expensive and labour-intensive proposition.
Cricket might go the way of Major League Baseball's Statcast, a tracking technology used by many baseball franchises and now also available on broadcast. According to the MLB website, Statcast "collects the data using a series of high-resolution optical cameras along with radar equipment that has been installed in all 30 Major League ballparks. The technology precisely tracks the location and movements of the ball and every player on the field at any given time."
The data is mined using algorithms on the raw video data, and hence a large amount of data is captured for every single pitch. It is not only used by franchises for analysis but also in broadcasts to help fans develop a better understanding.
The use of data promises to change not only how cricket is played but also how it is watched and analysed. It is possible to foresee new types of television shows presenting data-based insights, and new types of fan engagements, like fantasy leagues, enhanced by the use of data. Perhaps conventional wisdom about risk-taking and probabilities of success will be refined. Today's television broadcast is littered with statistics like WASP, the Batting Index, the Bowling Index and the Pressure Index. What is missing is a critical mass of experts who are competent enough to discuss the merits of these measures and educate fans on how they work.
Instead of ambidextrous players - polymath super-cricketers - big data might produce mini-cricketers run by super-managers
The first decade of franchise-based cricket saw the language and grammar of long-form cricket being adopted wholesale to describe the new game. Spinners, we were told in the early days, were deceiving batsmen the same way they did in Tests. This despite the fact that batsmen were often of a different mindset facing spin in T20s than in the middle of a Test. It is now clear that the 20-over game has little in common with the longer versions, and perhaps the use of data to maximise each player's productivity will provide the impetus for a new language.
The larger question is how this will affect the way the game is played. Buchanan's dream of using data and technology to systematically develop ambidextrous players - polymath super-cricketers - may well have to give way to developing thousands of players who loft the ball better than Tendulkar ever could, but can't play the short ball at all. Instead of super-cricketers, big data might produce mini-cricketers run by super-managers.
We have already seen how things can go pear-shaped for super-managers. Peter Moores had two stints as England's head coach. Kevin Pietersen, the England captain during Moores' first stint, would later ridicule him for constantly emphasising metrics. In his autobiography Pietersen suggested that the central effect of all the data input was to irritate the players. Moores' second stint ended farcically when an innocent comment, after England were eliminated from the 2015 World Cup, was used as proof of his unhealthy obsession with data. The subtext was obvious: sport is played with heart and brawn, so who does this guy think he is to assume numbers are important? For fans humiliated by a big defeat, this type of chauvinism is too delicious to resist. Data - facts - would just complicate their catharsis.
At the same time, data is central to every team's preparation for matches. In an interview to the Cricket Monthly, Ricky Ponting observed that matters have reached a point now where every player has a laptop, and every player has to study before games. Whatever Moores' critics might say, every team pores over vast amounts of data and studies their opponents.
What remains to be seen is the effect of big data on cricket's evolution. Will the overall quality of the game improve? Will the coach emerge as match-manager and chief tactician? Will tomorrow's average cricketer be fitter, stronger, more skilful, more versatile than today's? Or, despite the best intentions of coaches, captains and players, will the data ensure that new types of tail-enders proliferate?
Time will tell.
Sunday 19 April 2015
The surprising downsides of being clever
David Robson BBC Future
If ignorance is bliss, does a high IQ equal misery? Popular opinion would have it so. We tend to think of geniuses as being plagued by existential angst, frustration, and loneliness. Think of Virginia Woolf, Alan Turing, or Lisa Simpson – lone stars, isolated even as they burn their brightest. As Ernest Hemingway wrote: “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.” The harsh truth is that greater intelligence does not equate to wiser decisions — In fact, it can make you more foolish
The question may seem like a trivial matter concerning a select few – but the insights it offers could have ramifications for many. Much of our education system is aimed at improving academic intelligence; although its limits are well known, IQ is still the primary way of measuring cognitive abilities, and we spend millions on brain training and cognitive enhancers that try to improve those scores. But what if the quest for genius is itself a fool’s errand?
Anxiety can be common among the highly intelligent (Credit: Thinkstock)
The first steps to answering these questions were taken almost a century ago, at the height of the American Jazz Age. At the time, the new-fangled IQ test was gaining traction, after proving itself in World War One recruitment centres, and in 1926, psychologist Lewis Terman decided to use it to identify and study a group of gifted children. Combing California’s schools for the creme de la creme, he selected 1,500 pupils with an IQ of 140 or more – 80 of whom had IQs above 170. Together, they became known as the “Termites”, and the highs and lows of their lives are still being studied to this day.
As you might expect, many of the Termites did achieve wealth and fame – most notably Jess Oppenheimer, the writer of the classic 1950s sitcomI Love Lucy. Indeed, by the time his series aired on CBS, the Termites’ average salary was twice that of the average white-collar job. But not all the group met Terman’s expectations – there were many who pursued more “humble” professions such as police officers, seafarers, and typists. For this reason, Terman concluded that “intellect and achievement are far from perfectly correlated”. Nor did their smarts endow personal happiness. Over the course of their lives, levels of divorce, alcoholism and suicide were about the same as the national average.
It's lonely being smart (Credit: Thinkstock)
As the Termites enter their dotage, the moral of their story – that intelligence does not equate to a better life – has been told again and again. At best, a great intellect makes no differences to your life satisfaction; at worst, it can actually mean you are less fulfilled.
That’s not to say that everyone with a high IQ is a tortured genius, as popular culture might suggest – but it is nevertheless puzzling. Why don’t the benefits of sharper intelligence pay off in the long term?
A weighty burden
One possibility is that knowledge of your talents becomes something of a ball and chain. Indeed, during the 1990s, the surviving Termites were asked to look back at the events in their 80-year lifespan. Rather than basking in their successes, many reported that they had been plagued by the sense that they had somehow failed to live up to their youthful expectations.
Early achievers don't always go on to be successful (Credit: Thinkstock)
That sense of burden – particularly when combined with others’ expectations – is a recurring motif for many other gifted children. The most notable, and sad, case concerns the maths prodigy Sufiah Yusof. Enrolled at Oxford University aged 12, she dropped out of her course before taking her finals and started waitressing. She later worked as a call girl, entertaining clients with her ability to recite equations during sexual acts.
Another common complaint, often heard in student bars and internet forums, is that smarter people somehow have a clearer vision of the world’s failings. Whereas the rest of us are blinkered from existential angst, smarter people lay awake agonising over the human condition or other people’s folly.
Constant worrying may, in fact, be a sign of intelligence – but not in the way these armchair philosophers had imagined. Interviewing students on campus about various topics of discussion, Alexander Penney at MacEwan University in Canada found that those with the higher IQ did indeed feel more anxiety throughout the day. Interestingly, most worries were mundane, day-to-day concerns, though; the high-IQ students were far more likely to be replaying an awkward conversation, than asking the “big questions”. “It’s not that their worries were more profound, but they are just worrying more often about more things,” says Penney. “If something negative happened, they thought about it more.”
(Credit: Thinkstock)
Probing more deeply, Penney found that this seemed to correlate with verbal intelligence – the kind tested by word games in IQ tests, compared to prowess at spatial puzzles (which, in fact, seemed to reduce the risk of anxiety). He speculates that greater eloquence might also make you more likely to verbalise anxieties and ruminate over them. It’s not necessarily a disadvantage, though. “Maybe they were problem-solving a bit more than most people,” he says – which might help them to learn from their mistakes.
Mental blind spots
The harsh truth, however, is that greater intelligence does not equate to wiser decisions; in fact, in some cases it might make your choices a little more foolish. Keith Stanovich at the University of Toronto has spent the last decade building tests for rationality, and he has found that fair, unbiased decision-making is largely independent of IQ. Consider the “my-side bias” – our tendency to be highly selective in the information we collect so that it reinforces our previous attitudes. The more enlightened approach would be to leave your assumptions at the door as you build your argument – but Stanovich found that smarter people are almost no more likely to do so than people with distinctly average IQs.
That’s not all. People who ace standard cognitive tests are in fact slightly more likely to have a “bias blind spot”. That is, they are less able to see their own flaws, even when though they are quite capable of criticising the foibles of others. And they have a greater tendency to fall for the“gambler’s fallacy” – the idea that if a tossed coin turns heads 10 times, it will be more likely to fall tails on the 11th. The fallacy has been the ruination of roulette players planning for a red after a string of blacks, and it can also lead stock investors to sell their shares before they reach peak value – in the belief that their luck has to run out sooner or later.
Members of high IQ society Mensa are not immune to belief in the paranormal (Credit: Thinkstock)
A tendency to rely on gut instincts rather than rational thought might also explain why a surprisingly high number of Mensa members believe in the paranormal; or why someone with an IQ of 140 is about twice as likely to max out their credit card.
Indeed, Stanovich sees these biases in every strata of society. “There is plenty of dysrationalia – people doing irrational things despite more than adequate intelligence – in our world today,” he says. “The people pushing the anti-vaccination meme on parents and spreading misinformation on websites are generally of more than average intelligence and education.” Clearly, clever people can be dangerously, and foolishly, misguided.
People with an IQ above 140 are twice as likely to overspend on their credit card (Credit: Thinkstock)
So if intelligence doesn’t lead to rational decisions and a better life, what does? Igor Grossmann, at the University of Waterloo in Canada, thinks we need to turn our minds to an age-old concept: “wisdom”. His approach is more scientific that it might at first sound. “The concept of wisdom has an ethereal quality to it,” he admits. “But if you look at the lay definition of wisdom, many people would agree it’s the idea of someone who can make good unbiased judgement.”
In one experiment, Grossmann presented his volunteers with different social dilemmas – ranging from what to do about the war in Crimea to heartfelt crises disclosed to Dear Abby, the Washington Post’s agony aunt. As the volunteers talked, a panel of psychologists judged their reasoning and weakness to bias: whether it was a rounded argument, whether the candidates were ready to admit the limits of their knowledge – their “intellectual humility” – and whether they were ignoring important details that didn’t fit their theory.
High achievers tend to lament opportunities missed in their lives (Credit: Thinkstock)
High scores turned out to predict greater life satisfaction, relationship quality, and, crucially, reduced anxiety and rumination – all the qualities that seem to be absent in classically smart people. Wiser reasoning even seemed to ensure a longer life – those with the higher scores were less likely to die over intervening years. Crucially, Grossmann found that IQ was not related to any of these measures, and certainly didn’t predict greater wisdom. “People who are very sharp may generate, very quickly, arguments [for] why their claims are the correct ones – but may do it in a very biased fashion.”
Learnt wisdom
In the future, employers may well begin to start testing these abilities in place of IQ; Google has already announced that it plans to screen candidates for qualities like intellectual humility, rather than sheer cognitive prowess.
Fortunately, wisdom is probably not set in stone – whatever your IQ score. “I’m a strong believer that wisdom can be trained,” says Grossmann. He points out that we often find it easier to leave our biases behind when we consider other people, rather than ourselves. Along these lines, he has found that simply talking through your problems in the third person (“he” or “she”, rather than “I”) helps create the necessary emotional distance, reducing your prejudices and leading to wiser arguments. Hopefully, more research will suggest many similar tricks.
The challenge will be getting people to admit their own foibles. If you’ve been able to rest on the laurels of your intelligence all your life, it could be very hard to accept that it has been blinding your judgement. As Socrates had it: the wisest person really may be the one who can admit he knows nothing.
If ignorance is bliss, does a high IQ equal misery? Popular opinion would have it so. We tend to think of geniuses as being plagued by existential angst, frustration, and loneliness. Think of Virginia Woolf, Alan Turing, or Lisa Simpson – lone stars, isolated even as they burn their brightest. As Ernest Hemingway wrote: “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.” The harsh truth is that greater intelligence does not equate to wiser decisions — In fact, it can make you more foolish
The question may seem like a trivial matter concerning a select few – but the insights it offers could have ramifications for many. Much of our education system is aimed at improving academic intelligence; although its limits are well known, IQ is still the primary way of measuring cognitive abilities, and we spend millions on brain training and cognitive enhancers that try to improve those scores. But what if the quest for genius is itself a fool’s errand?
Anxiety can be common among the highly intelligent (Credit: Thinkstock)
The first steps to answering these questions were taken almost a century ago, at the height of the American Jazz Age. At the time, the new-fangled IQ test was gaining traction, after proving itself in World War One recruitment centres, and in 1926, psychologist Lewis Terman decided to use it to identify and study a group of gifted children. Combing California’s schools for the creme de la creme, he selected 1,500 pupils with an IQ of 140 or more – 80 of whom had IQs above 170. Together, they became known as the “Termites”, and the highs and lows of their lives are still being studied to this day.
As you might expect, many of the Termites did achieve wealth and fame – most notably Jess Oppenheimer, the writer of the classic 1950s sitcomI Love Lucy. Indeed, by the time his series aired on CBS, the Termites’ average salary was twice that of the average white-collar job. But not all the group met Terman’s expectations – there were many who pursued more “humble” professions such as police officers, seafarers, and typists. For this reason, Terman concluded that “intellect and achievement are far from perfectly correlated”. Nor did their smarts endow personal happiness. Over the course of their lives, levels of divorce, alcoholism and suicide were about the same as the national average.
It's lonely being smart (Credit: Thinkstock)
As the Termites enter their dotage, the moral of their story – that intelligence does not equate to a better life – has been told again and again. At best, a great intellect makes no differences to your life satisfaction; at worst, it can actually mean you are less fulfilled.
That’s not to say that everyone with a high IQ is a tortured genius, as popular culture might suggest – but it is nevertheless puzzling. Why don’t the benefits of sharper intelligence pay off in the long term?
A weighty burden
One possibility is that knowledge of your talents becomes something of a ball and chain. Indeed, during the 1990s, the surviving Termites were asked to look back at the events in their 80-year lifespan. Rather than basking in their successes, many reported that they had been plagued by the sense that they had somehow failed to live up to their youthful expectations.
Early achievers don't always go on to be successful (Credit: Thinkstock)
That sense of burden – particularly when combined with others’ expectations – is a recurring motif for many other gifted children. The most notable, and sad, case concerns the maths prodigy Sufiah Yusof. Enrolled at Oxford University aged 12, she dropped out of her course before taking her finals and started waitressing. She later worked as a call girl, entertaining clients with her ability to recite equations during sexual acts.
Another common complaint, often heard in student bars and internet forums, is that smarter people somehow have a clearer vision of the world’s failings. Whereas the rest of us are blinkered from existential angst, smarter people lay awake agonising over the human condition or other people’s folly.
Constant worrying may, in fact, be a sign of intelligence – but not in the way these armchair philosophers had imagined. Interviewing students on campus about various topics of discussion, Alexander Penney at MacEwan University in Canada found that those with the higher IQ did indeed feel more anxiety throughout the day. Interestingly, most worries were mundane, day-to-day concerns, though; the high-IQ students were far more likely to be replaying an awkward conversation, than asking the “big questions”. “It’s not that their worries were more profound, but they are just worrying more often about more things,” says Penney. “If something negative happened, they thought about it more.”
(Credit: Thinkstock)
Probing more deeply, Penney found that this seemed to correlate with verbal intelligence – the kind tested by word games in IQ tests, compared to prowess at spatial puzzles (which, in fact, seemed to reduce the risk of anxiety). He speculates that greater eloquence might also make you more likely to verbalise anxieties and ruminate over them. It’s not necessarily a disadvantage, though. “Maybe they were problem-solving a bit more than most people,” he says – which might help them to learn from their mistakes.
Mental blind spots
The harsh truth, however, is that greater intelligence does not equate to wiser decisions; in fact, in some cases it might make your choices a little more foolish. Keith Stanovich at the University of Toronto has spent the last decade building tests for rationality, and he has found that fair, unbiased decision-making is largely independent of IQ. Consider the “my-side bias” – our tendency to be highly selective in the information we collect so that it reinforces our previous attitudes. The more enlightened approach would be to leave your assumptions at the door as you build your argument – but Stanovich found that smarter people are almost no more likely to do so than people with distinctly average IQs.
That’s not all. People who ace standard cognitive tests are in fact slightly more likely to have a “bias blind spot”. That is, they are less able to see their own flaws, even when though they are quite capable of criticising the foibles of others. And they have a greater tendency to fall for the“gambler’s fallacy” – the idea that if a tossed coin turns heads 10 times, it will be more likely to fall tails on the 11th. The fallacy has been the ruination of roulette players planning for a red after a string of blacks, and it can also lead stock investors to sell their shares before they reach peak value – in the belief that their luck has to run out sooner or later.
Members of high IQ society Mensa are not immune to belief in the paranormal (Credit: Thinkstock)
A tendency to rely on gut instincts rather than rational thought might also explain why a surprisingly high number of Mensa members believe in the paranormal; or why someone with an IQ of 140 is about twice as likely to max out their credit card.
Indeed, Stanovich sees these biases in every strata of society. “There is plenty of dysrationalia – people doing irrational things despite more than adequate intelligence – in our world today,” he says. “The people pushing the anti-vaccination meme on parents and spreading misinformation on websites are generally of more than average intelligence and education.” Clearly, clever people can be dangerously, and foolishly, misguided.
People with an IQ above 140 are twice as likely to overspend on their credit card (Credit: Thinkstock)
So if intelligence doesn’t lead to rational decisions and a better life, what does? Igor Grossmann, at the University of Waterloo in Canada, thinks we need to turn our minds to an age-old concept: “wisdom”. His approach is more scientific that it might at first sound. “The concept of wisdom has an ethereal quality to it,” he admits. “But if you look at the lay definition of wisdom, many people would agree it’s the idea of someone who can make good unbiased judgement.”
In one experiment, Grossmann presented his volunteers with different social dilemmas – ranging from what to do about the war in Crimea to heartfelt crises disclosed to Dear Abby, the Washington Post’s agony aunt. As the volunteers talked, a panel of psychologists judged their reasoning and weakness to bias: whether it was a rounded argument, whether the candidates were ready to admit the limits of their knowledge – their “intellectual humility” – and whether they were ignoring important details that didn’t fit their theory.
High achievers tend to lament opportunities missed in their lives (Credit: Thinkstock)
High scores turned out to predict greater life satisfaction, relationship quality, and, crucially, reduced anxiety and rumination – all the qualities that seem to be absent in classically smart people. Wiser reasoning even seemed to ensure a longer life – those with the higher scores were less likely to die over intervening years. Crucially, Grossmann found that IQ was not related to any of these measures, and certainly didn’t predict greater wisdom. “People who are very sharp may generate, very quickly, arguments [for] why their claims are the correct ones – but may do it in a very biased fashion.”
Learnt wisdom
In the future, employers may well begin to start testing these abilities in place of IQ; Google has already announced that it plans to screen candidates for qualities like intellectual humility, rather than sheer cognitive prowess.
Fortunately, wisdom is probably not set in stone – whatever your IQ score. “I’m a strong believer that wisdom can be trained,” says Grossmann. He points out that we often find it easier to leave our biases behind when we consider other people, rather than ourselves. Along these lines, he has found that simply talking through your problems in the third person (“he” or “she”, rather than “I”) helps create the necessary emotional distance, reducing your prejudices and leading to wiser arguments. Hopefully, more research will suggest many similar tricks.
The challenge will be getting people to admit their own foibles. If you’ve been able to rest on the laurels of your intelligence all your life, it could be very hard to accept that it has been blinding your judgement. As Socrates had it: the wisest person really may be the one who can admit he knows nothing.
Tuesday 21 October 2014
A mutiny by World Bank staff when prescribed a dose of its own restructuring medicine
The recommendations of the World Bank/IMF are presented to us, the people of the South, as scientific, objective, necessary, fair, and in the best interests of the countries where they are to be implemented. This is why the rebellion episode by the bank staff to its restructuring is so significant
PETER RONALD DESOUZA in The Hindu
In the Financial Times of October 8, the columnist Shawn Donnan, reported that the World Bank was facing an internal “‘mutiny.” Yes, the word mutiny was used. The professional staff were apparently angry about several issues, a deep discontent, because of which the rebellion had been brewing over many days. The key issue was the restructuring exercise being undertaken by the President, Jim Yong Kim, to save, through both the elimination of benefits to staff on mission and also through possible lay-offs, the sum of $400 million. The restructuring exercise, staff felt, was deeply flawed both procedurally and substantively. The columnist reported some members saying that this “thing [restructuring] is affecting everything.” “We can’t do business. We don’t have the budget. It’s a mess, ...” Another staff member complained that “nickel and diming” on travel budgets was causing travelling staff to have to pay for their own breakfasts. “It’s really small beer,” she said. “Has anyone ever thought about the impact of these changes on staff morale?”
Resistance against restructuring
To assuage their feelings, before the semi-annual meeting of the Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) with Finance Ministers and Central Bankers of member countries, President Jim Yong Kim had to hurriedly convene a “town hall” meeting with the staff to discuss their concerns. The issues that was fuelling their anger were: (i) the cost-cutting exercise which meant that items of expenditure that they had been accustomed to, such as a paid for breakfast, were being withdrawn, (ii) the secrecy and opacity of the whole exercise i.e., appointment of consultants, payment of bonus to the senior management, hiring of new senior managers, etc, (iii) the award of a “scarce skills premium” of $94,000 as bonus, over and above his salary of $3,79,000, to the Chief Financial Officer who was carrying out the exercise, and (iv) to the appointment and payment of the huge sum of $12.5 million to external consultants such as McKinsey, Deloitte, and Booz Allen for advice on how to restructure a development Bank, as reported in the Economic Times of October 15, 2014.
To assuage their feelings, before the semi-annual meeting of the Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) with Finance Ministers and Central Bankers of member countries, President Jim Yong Kim had to hurriedly convene a “town hall” meeting with the staff to discuss their concerns. The issues that was fuelling their anger were: (i) the cost-cutting exercise which meant that items of expenditure that they had been accustomed to, such as a paid for breakfast, were being withdrawn, (ii) the secrecy and opacity of the whole exercise i.e., appointment of consultants, payment of bonus to the senior management, hiring of new senior managers, etc, (iii) the award of a “scarce skills premium” of $94,000 as bonus, over and above his salary of $3,79,000, to the Chief Financial Officer who was carrying out the exercise, and (iv) to the appointment and payment of the huge sum of $12.5 million to external consultants such as McKinsey, Deloitte, and Booz Allen for advice on how to restructure a development Bank, as reported in the Economic Times of October 15, 2014.
For those of us from the Global South, who not only receive but also have to follow the advice of the Bretton Woods twins, on how to “restructure” our economies and change our policies, this episode has four very interesting lessons. The recommendations of the World Bank/IMF are presented to us, the people of the South, as scientific, objective, necessary, fair, and in the best interests of the countries where they are to be implemented. The World Bank is the repository of the most authoritative knowledge on development. It annually publishes the flagship World Development Report (WDR), the first of which in 1978 was titled “Prospects for Growth and Alleviation of Poverty.” Every year since 1978, it flags important themes for development with the 2013 WDR being on “Jobs” and restructuring required to align them with the new economy. The 2015 WDR is on “Mind and Culture” and the World Bank website reports the central argument as being “that policy design that takes into account psychological and cultural factors will achieve development goals faster.” This is scholarly knowledge and is used by many university classrooms as part of required reading. This is what positions the World Bank as a premier knowledge institution on development. Then why is the rebellion episode so significant? There are four aspects of that which merit discussion.
The first is the resistance against the restructuring medicine. This is the same medicine used by the World Bank against the rest of the world. The restructuring exercise, which has eliminated jobs within the public sector, whether this be in government or in the support services required by any public institution, such as of subordinate administrative staff, has produced an underclass of workers, who, although they are still needed, have been deprived of the welfare and security benefits that the permanent staff enjoys and were benefits that had been won by a long history of working class struggles. So, when security guards, drivers, mess workers, sweepers, the class IV workers, have now to live lives filled with anxiety about illness, unemployment, etc., because they work for labour contractors who do not provide any such benefits, the anger of the World Bank professional staff who, because of the restructuring, have to pay for their “breakfast” is a little difficult to understand. The restructuring exercise of economies in the global south has produced an underclass whose livelihood insecurity has increased exponentially. The mutiny at the World Bank appears somewhat paradoxical. Not only is the exercise personally dishonest, given the rebellion when the policy is applied at home, but it is also intellectually dishonest when read against the 2015 WDR. Is this the modern performance of the “mutiny on the bounty”?
Control by the few
The second aspect is the process adopted in the internal restructuring. The Reuters and FT reports tell us that the common complaint of the staff is that the many aspects of the restructuring exercise, initiated by the president, were non-transparent. There was an opacity to the process. For example, questions such as the following needed to be asked. What was the method followed to give the CFO a “scarce skills premium” of $94,000 over and above his salary? Was the work done outside the normal duty of the CFO? How did the president decide on who qualifies for a “scarce skills premium” and how many persons have qualified for this bonus? These were questions asked at the town hall meeting. If the “scarce skills premium” was based on sound management principles, why did the CFO agree to forego the bonus after the uproar? These are good questions and lead one to wonder if countries have the same option of protesting? Did Greece and Portugal and Ireland and Argentina have the protest option? The interesting lesson from this episode is that restructuring produces pain and distress to the many while it rewards the few especially those tasked with implementing it. These few have access to political and intellectual power. They control the methods adopted of public justification which produces a discourse that the restructuring is necessary and will benefit the whole. The few get rewarded while the many pay the price in the restructuring in many countries of the global south.
The second aspect is the process adopted in the internal restructuring. The Reuters and FT reports tell us that the common complaint of the staff is that the many aspects of the restructuring exercise, initiated by the president, were non-transparent. There was an opacity to the process. For example, questions such as the following needed to be asked. What was the method followed to give the CFO a “scarce skills premium” of $94,000 over and above his salary? Was the work done outside the normal duty of the CFO? How did the president decide on who qualifies for a “scarce skills premium” and how many persons have qualified for this bonus? These were questions asked at the town hall meeting. If the “scarce skills premium” was based on sound management principles, why did the CFO agree to forego the bonus after the uproar? These are good questions and lead one to wonder if countries have the same option of protesting? Did Greece and Portugal and Ireland and Argentina have the protest option? The interesting lesson from this episode is that restructuring produces pain and distress to the many while it rewards the few especially those tasked with implementing it. These few have access to political and intellectual power. They control the methods adopted of public justification which produces a discourse that the restructuring is necessary and will benefit the whole. The few get rewarded while the many pay the price in the restructuring in many countries of the global south.
Neo-liberal triumph
The third aspect is the use of consultants. This is the most disappointing and alarming aspect of the episode. For an institution such as the World Bank, whose main rationale is that it is a knowledge institution about how to promote development, to now implicitly declare that it does not have the knowledge required to restructure itself is a severe admission of the weakness of its knowledge base and skill sets. How does it then prepare a road map to restructure economies when restructuring an institution is infinitely easier than restructuring the economy of a country? Restructuring an institution can draw on the interdisciplinary knowledge of the WDR 2015 such as best practice, graduated approaches, evidenced-based policies, results-based management, measuring and monitoring, etc. (all the keywords of the World Bank itself), to achieve the result of a better, leaner, more efficient, and fair institution. But the decision to hire outside consultants, paying a whopping fee of $12.5 million, shows that the World Bank does not either believe in its own capability, or worse doesn’t have this capability. What is alarming is the message that development thinking will, from now on, be done and propagated by the big global consultancies. Is the World Bank announcing that henceforth even its development knowledge will be outsourced? As reported in the Economic Times, one of the protesters said, “What do they know about development and the complexities of what we do?” Indeed, what do they know? But if we see the economic policy institutions of many countries, we will see a seamless movement of personnel between global consultancies and central banks. Our own development thinking has been outsourced to neo-liberal knowledge institutions, such as global consultancies, ratings agencies and investment banks. We can see this takeover of knowledge production in the area of economic policy, the triumph of the neo-liberal frame, even in India. Look at the key players of our economic policymaking. The World Bank has now given its stamp of approval to this trend. The recolonisation of the Indian mind and the policy discourse is near complete.
The fourth aspect of this troubling episode is the use of words to legitimise the action. In the last few months of the Indian public debate, we have come to see the power of words and the social power the purveyors of these words acquire. The word makes the world. Tagore argued for this philosophical position that language constructs reality, that we see the beauty of the world through our language, and that outside language there is no beauty. Controlling the word, the Bank decides to reward its CFO with a large bonus, while it is reducing the financial package of its other employees; it deploys the justification for this decision as a “scare skills premium.” The CFO gets the additional money because he has scarce skills. The investment Bank fraternity has to be rewarded with huge bonuses because they have scarce skills. Wall Street is built on this justification. This is capitalism’s masterstroke of controlling perception, controlling the public discourse by controlling words. We accept the differentials because we are made to believe it is a “scarce skills premium” to be paid for our own good. Sometimes a typographical error brings out the truth much better. By mistake I typed it as “scare skills premium.” It is.
Monday 25 August 2014
The Myth of Common Sense: Why The Social World Is Less Obvious Than It Seems
“Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any other human activity.”
-Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly
-Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly
“This is not rocket science”
-Bill Frist on fixing health care, The New York Times
-Bill Frist on fixing health care, The New York Times
As these two quotes illustrate, there is something strangely conflicted about contemporary views on government and policy. On one hand, many people are in apparent agreement that government frequently accomplishes less than it ought to, sometimes embarrassingly so. Yet on the other hand, many of these same people are also of the opinion that the failings of government do not imply any great difficulty of the problems themselves—that they are not rocket science, as it were.
Typically the conflict is resolved with reference to the presumed incompetence, pigheadedness, or outright corruption of our leaders. If only we elected the right people, gave them the right incentives, and—above all—if only our political leaders exhibited a little more common sense, everything would be alright. That both “we” and “they” consistently fail to follow these simple steps proves only that common sense is not nearly common enough.
There may be some truth to this attitude. But as a sociologist, I’ve also learned to be skeptical of common sense, especially when it is invoked as the solution to complex social problems.
Sociology has had to confront the criticism that it has “discovered” little that an intelligent person couldn’t have figured out on his or her own.
Sociology, of course, has its own conflicted history with common sense. For almost as long as it has existed, that is, sociology has had to confront the criticism that it has “discovered” little that an intelligent person couldn’t have figured out on his or her own.
Why is it, for example, that most social groups, from friendship circles to workplaces, are so homogenous in terms of race, education level, and even gender? Why do some things become popular and not others? How much does the media influence society? Is more choice better or worse? Do taxes stimulate the economy?
Social scientists have struggled with all these questions for generations, and continue to do so. Yet many people feel they could answer these questions themselves—simply by examining their own experience. Unlike for problems in physics and biology, therefore, where we need experts to tell us what is true, when the topic is human or social behavior, we’re all “experts,” so we trust our own opinions at least as much as we trust those of social scientists.
Nor is this tendency necessarily a bad reaction—any theory should be consistent with empirical reality, and in the case of social science, that reality includes everyday experience. But not everything about the social world is transparent from common sense alone—in part because not everything that seems like common sense turns out to be true, and in part because common sense is extremely good at making the world seem more orderly than it really is.
Common sense isn’t anything like a scientific theory of the world.
As sociologists are fond of pointing out, common sense isn’t anything like a scientific theory of the world. Rather it is a hodge-podge of accumulated advice, experiences, aphorisms, norms, received wisdom, inherited beliefs, and introspection that is neither coherent nor even internally self-consistent. Birds of a feather flock together, but opposites also attract. Two minds are better than one, except when too many cooks spoil the broth. Does absence make the heart grow fonder, or is out of sight out of mind? At what point does try, try again turn into flogging a dead horse? And if experience is the best teacher, when should one also maintain a beginner’s mind?
The problem with common sense is not that it isn’t sensible, but that what is sensible turns out to depend on lots of other features of the situation. And in general, it’s impossible to know which of these many potential features are relevant until after the fact (a fundamental problem that philosophers and cognitive scientists call the “frame problem”).
Nevertheless, once we do know the answer, it is almost always possible to pick and choose from our wide selection of common-sense statements about the world to produce something that sounds likely to be true. And because we only ever have to account for one outcome at a time (because we can ignore the “counterfactuals,” things that could’ve happened, but didn’t), it is always possible to construct an account of what did happen that not only makes sense, but also sounds like a causal story.
To take a common example, think about how we explain success. Why is the Mona Lisa the most famous painting in the world? Why did J.K. Rowling‘s Harry Potter books sell over 300 million copies? And why is Madonna the most successful female musical artist of all time? Now that we know who these superstars are, their success seems easy to explain—common sense even. They simply outperformed the competition. Whether they did that through pure genius, clever marketing, or sheer tenacity is a matter of debate (you be the judge), but in the end, it doesn’t really matter. In the competitive marketplace of ideas, a product succeeds because it represents what people want—otherwise, they wouldn’t have devoted their scarce time, money, and attention to it. Right?
Well, sort of. But if that’s true, why are superstars so hard to pick out in advance? Why did several children’s publishers reject the initial Harry Pottermanuscript? Why did no one pay much attention to the Mona Lisa for nearly 400 years? And why did music critics dismiss the early Madonna as an attention seeker with limited talent? Whatever their personal preferences, how could they have failed to understand the demands of the marketplace, which after all is precisely what they are rewarded for doing?
Nor is it just the critics who get their predictions wrong—marketers can’t seem to figure out what will sell either. If they could, they wouldn’t waste their efforts on the vast majority of books, movies, and albums that lose money. So what explains why some cultural products are stunningly successful, while most aren’t; and why at the same time, no one, including the experts, seems to be able to predict which is which?
A few years ago, my students and I studied exactly this question by setting up an experiment in which roughly 15,000 participants were asked to listen to, rate, and download songs by unknown bands off a website we created. Some of the participants had to make their decisions independently, while others had information about which of the songs other people liked. We found two results. First, in the “social influence” condition, popular songs were more popular (and unpopular songs less popular) than in the independent case. But second, it became harder to predict which particular songs would be the most popular.
What these results suggest is that in the real world, where social influence is much stronger than in our artificial experiment, enormous differences in success may indeed be due to small, random fluctuations early on in an artist’s career, which then get amplified by a process of cumulative advantage—a “rich-get-richer” phenomenon that is thought to arise in many social systems.
The random fluctuations arising from social influence were larger than those arising from differences in quality.
A critical feature of this experiment was our ability to create multiple “worlds” in which randomly assigned groups of people could create different versions of history in parallel with each other. By observing how popular the same song became in different worlds, we could measure directly how much of its success can be attributed to some intrinsic “quality,” and how much results from random chance. We found that although, on average, good songs do better than bad songs, the random fluctuations arising from social influence were larger than those arising from differences in quality.
The problem with this explanation, however, is that in real life we never get to experience these multiple histories—only the one history that we have lived through. So although one can argue that Madonna or Harry Potter or even Shakespeare may owe their success more to random chance and cumulative advantage than to intrinsic superiority, it is impossible to refute the common sense view that history took the path that it did because the winners embodied precisely the greatness to which we attribute them. And for a Madonna or a Harry Potter or a Shakespeare fan, that is typically the end of the argument.
Common sense, in other words, is extremely good at making the world seem sensible, quickly classifying believable information as old news, rejecting explanations that don’t coincide with experience, and ignoring counterfactuals. Viewed this way, common sense starts to seem less like a way to understand the world, than a way to survive without having to understand it.
That may have been a perfectly fine design for most of evolutionary history, where humans lived in small groups and could safely ignore most of what was going on in the world. But increasingly the problems of the modern world—distributions of wealth, sustainable development, public health—require us to understand cause and effect in complex systems, with consequences unfolding over years or decades. And for these kinds of problems, there’s no reason to believe that common sense is much of a guide at all.
Fortunately, in recent years the explosive growth of the Internet has brought with it the ability to measure the actions and interactions of millions of people simultaneously. Not just social networking services like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, but email interactions, instant messaging, and Internet phone calls all provide measurable traces of the person-to-person interactions that have always been at the core of social life, but have until recently been invisible to science.
Already this flood of data has generated enormous interest in the research community, with thousands of physicists and computer scientists beginning to pay attention to problems traditionally in the domain of the social sciences. It’s tempting to look back at past technological breakthroughs, such as the telescope or the microscope, when new instrumentation made the previously invisible visible, and wonder if perhaps social science is on the edge of its own scientific revolution.
Social problems, that is, must be viewed not as the subject of rhetorical debates, but as scientific problems
But if we are to make use of these impressive new capabilities to address the kinds of problems that governments have historically failed to solve, we also need to think differently about the problems themselves. Social problems, that is, must be viewed not as the subject of rhetorical debates, but as scientific problems, in the sense that some combination of theory, data, and experiment can provide useful insights beyond that which can be derived through intuition and experience alone.
Clearly we’re a long way from a world in which cause and effect in social and economic systems can be established with the level of certainty we’ve come to expect from the physical sciences. In fact, the world of human behavior is sufficiently complicated and unpredictable that no matter how long or hard we try, we will always be stuck with some level of uncertainty, in which case leaders will have to do what they’ve always done and make the best decisions they can under the circumstances.
It sounds like a lot of effort for an uncertain payoff, but curing cancer has also proven to be an enormously complex undertaking, far more resistant to medical science than was once thought, yet no one is throwing up their hands on that one. It is time to apply the same admirable resolve to understand the world—no matter how long it takes—that we display in our struggles to address the important problems of physical and medical science to social problems as well.
Saturday 6 April 2013
US universities offer software which they claim can instantly grade students' essays and short written answers
From The Independent 6/4/2013
Students could soon find their essays being instantly graded by a computer - rather than waiting weeks for a professor’s ponderous comments.
Students could soon find their essays being instantly graded by a computer - rather than waiting weeks for a professor’s ponderous comments.
New software developed in the United States which means they receive an instant grade through their computer if they send it online will be available for UK universities to use.
The software programme has been developed by EdX, a non-profit making enterprise set up by Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and will be available free on the web to any organisation that wants to use it.
It uses artificial intelligence to grade students' essays and short written answers - freeing professors to carry out other work.
So far its use has been confined to the US - where a row is raging over whether it is right to use it to measure students’ essays which, in some subjects, include a fair amount of opinion around the factual content. Many academics believe it cannot replace the words of wisdom of a professional lecturer.
However, Anant Agarwal, president of EdX, predicted it would be a useful pedagogic tool - allowing students to redo essays over and over again thus improving the quality of their answers.
“There is huge value in learning with instant feedback,” he said. “Students are telling us they learn much better with instant feedback.”
He added: “We found that the quality of the grading is similar to the variation you find from instructor to instructor.”
An online petition against the practice, launched by a group calling itself Professionals Against Machine Scoring of Student Essays in High-Stakes Assessment, has amassed almost 2,000 signatures - including that of Noam Chomsky - protesting at the idea.
The group’s petition says: “Let’s face the realities of automatic essay scoring. Computers cannot ‘read’. They cannot measure the essentials of communication; accuracy, reasoning, adequacy of evidence, good sense, ethical stance, convincing argument, meaningful organisation, clarity and veracity, among others.”
On the other hand, students said that - if it was available for the individual to use - it could become a handy tool for a student to test the water on their essay before submitting to a professor for grading.
Thursday 14 April 2011
Spin and the art of attack
Being an aggressive spinner is not about bowling flat and fast. Quite the opposite, and you only have to look at veteran bowlers operate in Twenty20 to see that
Aakash Chopra
April 14, 2011
Grounds are getting smaller, wickets flatter, bats thicker. And just to make it tougher for bowlers, the format of the game has got shorter. As if the rule book doesn't already favour batsmen, these "innovations" have stacked the odds against bowlers higher still. But while it has ostensibly become tougher for bowlers to succeed, good ones will always have their say.
Who are these "good bowlers", though? In the pre-Twenty20 era these were men who could simply bowl quick, for a batsman needed special skills to get on top of someone bowling at 145kph. It was widely believed that the shorter the format, the smaller the role of a spinner. In fact, the only way for a spinner to survive in Twenty20 was to bowl quick and flat, or so it was believed for the longest time.
But a look at the spinners in action in the current IPL is enough to tell you an entirely different story. Spinners who're bowling slower in the air are ruling the roost.
Is it only about bowling slow or it there more to it? Let's take a look at what's making these bowlers ever so successful.
A big heart
While fast bowlers are the stingy kind, who hate runs being scored off them, spinners are more often than not advised to be generous and to always be prepared to get hit. Bishan Bedi would tell his wards that a straight six is always hit off a good ball and one should never feel bad about it. Having a big heart doesn't mean that you should stop caring about getting hit; rather that you shouldn't chicken out and start bowling flatter.
Suraj Randiv could easily have bowled flatter when he was hit for two consecutive sixes by Manoj Tiwary in the first match, but he showed the heart to flight another delivery, and got the better of his opponent. You rarely see Daniel Vettori or Shane Warne take a step back whenever they come under the hammer. Instead of thinking of ways to restrict damage, they try to plot a dismissal.
Slow down the pace
Most young spinners don't realise that the quicker one bowls, the easier it gets for the batsman, who doesn't have to move his feet to get to the pitch of the ball and smother the spin. You can do fairly well while staying inside the crease, and small errors of judgement aren't fatal either, as long as you're playing straight.
The slower the delivery, the tougher it is to generate power to clear the fence, but there are no such issues if the bowler is sending down darts. In fact, even rotating the strike is a lot easier if the bowler is bowling quicker, for you need great hands to manoeuvre the slower delivery.
Yes, it is perhaps easier to find the blockhole if you're bowling quick, but you're not really going to get under the bat and bowl the batsman, since you don't have that sort of pace.
Also, if you bowl quick, the chances of getting turn off the surface (unless it is really abrasive) are minimal. You must flight the ball and bowl slow to allow the ball to grip the pitch and get purchase.
Attack the batsman
Mushtaq Ahmed tells young spinners that they need to have the attitude of fast bowlers to attack batsmen.
Attacking the batsman is often misinterpreted as bowling quick. That's what the fast men do; you hit them for a six and you're almost guaranteed a bouncer next ball. For a spinner, attacking has a different meaning - going slower and enticing the batsman.
Bowling slow must not be confused with giving the ball more air. The trajectory can still remain flat while bowling slow. Some batsmen are quick to put on their dancing shoes the moment the ball goes above eye level while standing in the stance, so it's important to keep the ball below their eye level and yet not bowl quick. Vettori does it with consummate ease and reaps rewards. He rarely bowls quick; he relies on changing the pace and length to deceive the batsman. And if the batsman is rooted to the crease and is reluctant to use his feet, you can flight the ball.
Add variety
The best way to not just survive but thrive as a spinner is to keep evolving.
Anil Kumble not only slowed down his pace but also added a googly to his armoury in the latter half of his career. Muttiah Muralitharan added another dimension to his bowling when he started bowling the doosra. Suraj Randiv stands tall at the crease and extracts a bit of extra bounce. Ravi Ashwin has mastered the carrom ball.
Instead of learning to undercut the ball (which is obviously a lot easier to develop), it's worth developing a doosra, a carrom ball or some other variety.
Young kids must understand that when you bowl flatter-faster deliveries, the ball behaves somewhat like a hard ball does on a concrete surface, skidding off the pitch. Slower balls, on the other hand, act like tennis balls, with far more bounce.
Up and coming spinners need to set their priorities right. They can either bend the front knee to reduce height while taking the arm away from the ear to bowl darts, or learn from the likes of Warne, Vettori, Murali and the like to succeed in all formats, provided the basics are right.
Aakash Chopra
April 14, 2011
Grounds are getting smaller, wickets flatter, bats thicker. And just to make it tougher for bowlers, the format of the game has got shorter. As if the rule book doesn't already favour batsmen, these "innovations" have stacked the odds against bowlers higher still. But while it has ostensibly become tougher for bowlers to succeed, good ones will always have their say.
Who are these "good bowlers", though? In the pre-Twenty20 era these were men who could simply bowl quick, for a batsman needed special skills to get on top of someone bowling at 145kph. It was widely believed that the shorter the format, the smaller the role of a spinner. In fact, the only way for a spinner to survive in Twenty20 was to bowl quick and flat, or so it was believed for the longest time.
But a look at the spinners in action in the current IPL is enough to tell you an entirely different story. Spinners who're bowling slower in the air are ruling the roost.
Is it only about bowling slow or it there more to it? Let's take a look at what's making these bowlers ever so successful.
A big heart
While fast bowlers are the stingy kind, who hate runs being scored off them, spinners are more often than not advised to be generous and to always be prepared to get hit. Bishan Bedi would tell his wards that a straight six is always hit off a good ball and one should never feel bad about it. Having a big heart doesn't mean that you should stop caring about getting hit; rather that you shouldn't chicken out and start bowling flatter.
Suraj Randiv could easily have bowled flatter when he was hit for two consecutive sixes by Manoj Tiwary in the first match, but he showed the heart to flight another delivery, and got the better of his opponent. You rarely see Daniel Vettori or Shane Warne take a step back whenever they come under the hammer. Instead of thinking of ways to restrict damage, they try to plot a dismissal.
Slow down the pace
Most young spinners don't realise that the quicker one bowls, the easier it gets for the batsman, who doesn't have to move his feet to get to the pitch of the ball and smother the spin. You can do fairly well while staying inside the crease, and small errors of judgement aren't fatal either, as long as you're playing straight.
The slower the delivery, the tougher it is to generate power to clear the fence, but there are no such issues if the bowler is sending down darts. In fact, even rotating the strike is a lot easier if the bowler is bowling quicker, for you need great hands to manoeuvre the slower delivery.
Yes, it is perhaps easier to find the blockhole if you're bowling quick, but you're not really going to get under the bat and bowl the batsman, since you don't have that sort of pace.
Also, if you bowl quick, the chances of getting turn off the surface (unless it is really abrasive) are minimal. You must flight the ball and bowl slow to allow the ball to grip the pitch and get purchase.
Attack the batsman
Mushtaq Ahmed tells young spinners that they need to have the attitude of fast bowlers to attack batsmen.
Attacking the batsman is often misinterpreted as bowling quick. That's what the fast men do; you hit them for a six and you're almost guaranteed a bouncer next ball. For a spinner, attacking has a different meaning - going slower and enticing the batsman.
Bowling slow must not be confused with giving the ball more air. The trajectory can still remain flat while bowling slow. Some batsmen are quick to put on their dancing shoes the moment the ball goes above eye level while standing in the stance, so it's important to keep the ball below their eye level and yet not bowl quick. Vettori does it with consummate ease and reaps rewards. He rarely bowls quick; he relies on changing the pace and length to deceive the batsman. And if the batsman is rooted to the crease and is reluctant to use his feet, you can flight the ball.
Add variety
The best way to not just survive but thrive as a spinner is to keep evolving.
Anil Kumble not only slowed down his pace but also added a googly to his armoury in the latter half of his career. Muttiah Muralitharan added another dimension to his bowling when he started bowling the doosra. Suraj Randiv stands tall at the crease and extracts a bit of extra bounce. Ravi Ashwin has mastered the carrom ball.
Instead of learning to undercut the ball (which is obviously a lot easier to develop), it's worth developing a doosra, a carrom ball or some other variety.
Young kids must understand that when you bowl flatter-faster deliveries, the ball behaves somewhat like a hard ball does on a concrete surface, skidding off the pitch. Slower balls, on the other hand, act like tennis balls, with far more bounce.
Up and coming spinners need to set their priorities right. They can either bend the front knee to reduce height while taking the arm away from the ear to bowl darts, or learn from the likes of Warne, Vettori, Murali and the like to succeed in all formats, provided the basics are right.
Saturday 26 April 2008
Everything I know about women . . .
. . . Our correspondent learnt from his two-year-old niece – from not making her cry to the art of gift giving
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